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That was the part that had haunted her once she’d gotten back to work and had slowly accumulated more responsibilities. She had learned fast that if she didn’t draw boundaries around her personal time, she would never have any.

Vesuvius had never managed to do the same.

The obvious conclusion to draw was that, when it really came down to it, he didn’t want to do the same.

She tried to make herself fall back to sleep, but her brain was humming along and wouldn’t let go. And so Aeryn found herself wide-awake, thinking of all the times she had believed they would end well, often in the face of clear indications that they wouldn’t.

She thought about all the times she’d given him the benefit of the doubt. How hard she had tried to be empathetic and understanding because he was a king and the pressures of that had to be intense. How she had always held on to the hope that things were going to work out for them.

And they hadn’t.

Aeryn had been wrong on every point.

She had given birth to Faith alone. Her parents had been waiting for her in the waiting room, but that wasn’t the same. Faith had never met her father.

And as much as she had told him—and had taken pleasure in thinking for years now—that she would tell Faith that her father was dead, it made her sick to imagine it.

Because that wasn’t what she wanted either.

None of this was what she wanted, but what she did know was that she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t live the way they had before, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always too aware that every stolen moment they had could be stolen out from under them.

It was easier not to have him at all than to imagine she had him, then lose him.

She had done that too many times to count before the day she’d lost him for good.

Aeryn listened to him breathe beside her. She felt the heat of his skin, and she had slept so little this night, she should have fallen right back to sleep and basked in him a while longer. But she didn’t.

Instead, she felt impossibly calm even while her heart ached inside her chest. Part of that was him. She had always slept better with him.

Everything was better with him. That was a hard-won little truth, but how could she build a life around that when he wasn’t hers? He never had been, and it wasn’t because of his betrothal. It was because of the kingdom.

When the smoke of his abdication and near death cleared, the kingdom would still have its hold on him.

Aeryn could accept that today in a way she never could have before. She was at peace with the inevitability because she knew, now. She’d accepted things she hadn’t been able to take on board before.

He had turned up on her doorstep. He had hit his head and lost his memory, and so she’d had to tell him the story of them. He’d done the same when he could.

All of it was terrible and beautiful, and she thought she should have been a little more specific about her Christmas wishes this year. That little bring me the love of my life she’d said, in jest, to the Santa who she’d taken Faith to see at the Lincoln Park Zoo last week—she really should have made it clear that she meant a new one.

Not this man who had haunted her for too long already.

But now that he’d come here, it was impossible to keep telling herself lies about the past.

The truth was that they had never been meant to meet.

Aeryn was descended from no royalty. There was not the faintest shred of anything fancy in her blood and no people of any renown whatsoever on either side of her family tree. She came from simple, hardworking stock, who had labored for generations in places like Germany, Norway, and England, and had crossed the Atlantic to do more of the same. Always practical. Never flashy.

She suspected she was the first member of her entire bloodline to get this close to a king, and would very likely be the last.

It wasn’t that she felt embarrassed by that. On the contrary. She was proud of the people she’d come from and the lives they had built with clear eyes, deeply unpretentious natures, and a willingness to put in the hard work. Her parents were some of the best people she knew. That she’d let them down with her behavior—even if they claimed she hadn’t—would likely bother her forever.

But an important aspect of being genetically clear-eyed and practical was recognizing when the hard work and labor needed to stop. When it was time—past time—to move on. Vesuvius might have left his throne behind, but he was still every inch a king. And no matter what his title was, he would still be crafted entirely of royal blood.

There was no universe in which she would be acceptable as his companion, much less the mother of his child.

Part of her was something perilously close to furious, because she understood that his coming here was forcing her to look at all the things she’d been coasting by on these past two years. It was easier to blame him. It was easier to think hard on his betrayals and her hurt feelings and all the rest of it, but there was no good way for this to end. There never had been.

The only real truth was that it had always been going to end. There had never been any other solution—that just hadn’t been something she ever would have willingly seen on her own. She never would have walked away of her own volition. She liked to think that it was Faith who had forced her to do the right thing, but she’d never had to put that to a real test, because Vesuvius had decided they were done at the same time.